Madeleine Joan Blaustein (October 9, 1960 — December 11, 2008), most commonly credited as Maddie Blaustein, was a voice actress for the English-language dub of the Pokémon anime. Her most famous role is that of Meowth. In season 1, she was credited under her birth name Adam Blaustein, while in seasons 2 and 3, as well as the firstthreemovies, she was credited as Addie Blaustein.

Contents

Biography

Blaustein was born in Long Island, New York, USA, as Adam John Blaustein. She was a male-to-female transsexual. Because of this, she was usually casted as male characters.

In addition to being a voice actress, Blaustein was also an artist and writer. She had written and edited for Marvel Comics and, at the time of her death, was the senior digital artist at DC Comics. She created the character of Rubber-Band Man from the cartoon Static Shock. Blaustein was an artist in Tranny Road Show, a performing group composed of transgender artists and performers. She had also collaborated with Gina Kamentsky on the cartoon Platform 6. She also coached Kayzie Rogers for anime voice acting.

Death

Pokémon fan sites PokéBeach and Serebii.net both reported that anonymous sources, at least one affiliated with 4Kids Entertainment, told them Blaustein died in her sleep on December 11, 2008, after saying she was not feeling well.

Several days later on December 16, a blogger for 4Kids' The Buzz news feed posted confirmation of Blaustein's death.

Trivia

Maddie and Ikue Ohtani are the only actors listed as reprising their anime roles (Meowth and Pikachu, respectively) in Pokémon Live!. While Ohtani is listed as the voice of Pikachu in the show, considering Ohtani's role in the dub is just a reuse of her work from the Japanese version, it's likely only archive recordings of Ikue Ohtani were used for Pikachu in the show. Given this, Maddie is very likely the only actor from the anime to actually contribute a new performance for the live show.